Here we have a drawing of a productive stretch of river. Water quickens as a hole shallows and pours over a riffle that deepens into a run before the river deepens again into another pool. Long slow pools in the Little Miami typically have a soft bottom that does not provide much food for either bass or catfish. Often they run waist deep for hundreds of yards and when the water is clear you can see that are devoid of both cover and fish. But as the water speeds up at the tail of a pool the bottom becomes hard, mostly a mixture of smaller gravel and rock while the riffle/run below has bigger rocks mixed in. This area of hard bottom can run deceptively far up into the pool unseen from above the water, but as soon as the bottom begins to harden it can hold fish. Often the faster water in the tail becomes smooth as it shallows and is known as a slick. In spring, after the water is sufficiently warm enough for smallmouth to be active, all through fall, the tail of pools are the most consistent fish producing spots on the river. I usually start out with an inline spinner cast cross current and quartering upstream, fan casting my way across the tail. An inline spinner's blades will not turn correctly if cast directly upstream so be sure and cast both accross stream and upstream. If the tail has a slick, a topwater twitched as it sweeps downstream can be exciting as can a deerhair bug fished with a flyrod. Be sure to throw a few casts up further into the hole in case the current has swept away the muck further up into the hole than it looks. The tail of a big pool is a place that I will often stop and fish again walking out at the end of a fishing trip as fish drop back out of a pool and begin to feed replacing those you might have hooked earlier. Some of the best spots on the river, the destination spots, have a distinct tail/riffle/run/pool transition from onr pool to the next. These spots are also the food factories in the river. hellgrammites, caddisflies, snails, baitfish, and crayfish abound. The run or head of the pool is also prefered habitat for small mussels. If deep holes and pools are the living rooms and bedrooms of the stream basses world, think of the riffle and run as his kitchen and dining room. The run or deep end of a riffle is also a good place to search for feeding sauger, white bass, and channel cats. The water depth and speed can vary greatly over the length of a riffle/run and you can end up throwing half the lures in your box in one hundred yard stretch. Don't be afraid to keep switching lures here as conditions dictate. Our drawing also shows a shallow backwater. These are often small fry nurseries and are filled with tiny fish seeking safety in the shallows. Very late in the day or at first light can find bass patrolling the deeper edges of these backwaters. Deeper backwaters can also be a fun place to throw a dry fly for pumpkinseeds and other panfish. At the bottom of runs weedbeds often begin, holes or breaks in these can hold bass but they are mostly one fish spots.
In the next drawing we see a smaller stream entering the main river flow. In flood these streams spew rocks out into the river and create their own rock bar and/or riffle in the Little Miami. These act just like the riffles between the pools in the river, speeding up the water flow and creating a hard bottom and another food factory. These are great place to throw either a grub or jig, letting it sweep downstream in the current off the end of the bar and into the bar's eddy. The water above the bar becomes in essense a miniature tail not unlike the tail of a pool and should be fished accordingly. As the water sweeps around the rock bar at the incoming creeks mouth it often creates a seam where fast water flows past slow water. This seam can extend for quite a ways downstream holding fish. Here a fish can hold in slower water and dart out and catch food as it passes by. Here you also often see gar holding in clear water.
In the third picture we have a bend in the river. Usually you can only fish such places from the shallow inside of the bend with the far bank being to steep to fish from. Very early and late in the day you can sometimes find bass herding minnows up on the shallow gravel of inside bends. If you cast ahead of these swirls with a small rapala or inline spinner you allmost always are rewarded with a jolting strike. The outside of river bends are typically the deepest spots in the river as the current hits here full force in flood, scouring out a hole. If there is any flooded timber in the hole, here is where you want to try and catch that big shovelhead. The now defunct railroad ofen dumped huge amounts of stone and riprap along outside bends to controll erosion. Here, with both current and cover, bass and catfish find good hunting so the fishings often great. The best example of this kind of cover is the "Big Rocks" just upstream from South Lebanon. These kind of spots, like distinct riffles/runs, are destination spots that you plan a fishing trip around. A plastic grub might just be the best lure choice here but plan on losing a bunch of them to the rocks.
Of course there a million other kinds of fish holding spots in the river besides the ones listed above. Bridge abutments, holes or cover in a pool etc., but they all usually have one thing in common, except in winter, when they congregate in deep pools, gamefish in the river prefer rock or gravel to a mucky bottom. Find that with some moderately deep water nearby and odds are you will find fish.
No comments:
Post a Comment